Chrome OS-Blog.com

This is a press release I just received from Acer. Unfortunately they won’t be launching a Chrome OS netbook at the Computex. But read it yourself:

Despite recent rumours in the press regarding the launch of Chrome OS based netbooks at Computex, Acer today confirms that it has no short-term plans for such a product. Acer believes that Google Chrome OS is without doubt an exciting product announcement and deserves full attention as well as an in-depth study of its potential from a consumer’s perspective. Acer is naturally interested in any product or service that enhances the overall experience of its products and will of course be following the development and progress of Google Chrome and the evolution of Google’s overall product strategy very closely.

What do you think about that? Please leave comments (no registration required).

After four months there’s finally a new release to download. The build routine has become a lot faster and easier to use. It can be executed on 64-bit systems only, however, so I had to install a fresh Ubuntu 9.10 first in order to create it. There are some obvious changes and a lot of changes under the hood, so it definitely makes sense to try out this one. You can configure your network connection before trying to login with a Google account now, which was a long-awaited feature in the community. You can also sign up for a new Google account from the login screen now.

I’m offering to versions for download now: one for use on USB drives and one for use with VMWare Player. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to make it run in VirtualBox, but I haven’t tried it on many systems, so it may be worth a try to use the VMWare version in VirtualBox. Please leave comments on your progress (no registration required).

Oh, yeah, and here is the link to the download page…

At the RSA conference, Will Drewry (software security engineer at Google) announced a business version of Chrome OS. The release date is supposed to be some time in 2011. Besides the mere (prospective) existence, there aren’t any details known about it. So check back later, I’ll keep you informed.

After a couple of weeks full of rumors, first pictures and a video of a possible Chrome OS tablet appeared on the Chromium project website. Although the Chromium project is NOT Google, the fact that it was made by Glen Murphy, a lead UI designer for Chrome OS at Google, can be seen as an announcement for a device like that. The video shows a demonstration of the user interface. Click here to see pictures, video and a list of already known features.

The MSI dual-screen netbook announced at the CES will most likely be shipped with Windows 7 or Chrome OS depending on customer preference. This was confirmed by the company in an interview with LaptopMag. The device features a standard 10-inch TFT screen and a touchscreen that gives haptic feedback instead of a keyboard. There is, however, no information about other technical specifications as well as a price range.

Last year in November, Jon Stokes and Ryan Paul had engineering director Matthew Papakipos and Google PR Eitan Bencuya in an interview about Chrome OS. The interview was released in January 2010 and reveals detail information about Google’s new operating system. Click here fr a summary and a link to the full interview.

According to Jim Wong, president of Acer’s IT products division, the company plans to sell at least one million netbooks in 2010 that have Chrome OS preinstalled. He assumes Chrome OS netbooks will make up 10 percent of the company’s overall netbook sales this year.

Only one and a half year after the first release of Chrome, the fourth version of Google’s browser has been released. The latest version now features bookmark synchronisation between installations on different computers via the user’s Google account. There is also the possibility of installing extensions. Today, there are already 1,800 available for download.

Additionally, Google introduced several new APIs to make the browser talk to other applications. The Web-Storage-API makes it possible to save your work offline without the need to use Google Gears. The Web-SQL-Database-API lets provides access to local SQL databases and the Notofication API gives developers the opportunity to use the operating system’s notification area.

As in every update, also JavaScript speed was increased. Today, users have to request the update manually. However, all users will be automatically notified of the update in the next days.

In an interview with Digitimes Acer chairman and CEO J.T. Wang announced that Acer will be the first hardware vendor to offer a netbook with Chrome OS preinstalled. According to several industry sources the release date will be in the second half of 2010. This is the second time acer uses a Google OS. They already have their Aspire D250 with Windows XP and Google Android dual-boot capabilities on the market.

I added a description of how to convert an .img file to a .vdi file for Sun’s VirtualBox into my article Download: Chrome OS image for USB drives. It’s really easy and lets you use my newly created Chrome OS build from December 2nd in VirtualBox as well as from a USB stick.